Page 6 of Her Dark Lies
What do I think?
Oh. My. God.
The island is stunning. It shoots straight up from the water, the sheer rock face stark and unforgiving. We’re approaching from the southwest, this I know from eavesdropping on Jack’s conversation with the captain. From this vantage point, Isola seems to drift on top of the water, though I know it is an illusion.
The cliff is adorned with tiny shoots of bougainvillea desperate for purchase and a steep stone edge that makes my heart go into my throat. I’m not afraid of heights, but the idea of standing up there, looking out over the water, and stepping wrongly, makes me suddenly terrified, even as I long to set the colors of the cliffside on a canvas.
The formula begins brewing in my head.Two parts ultramarine, two parts raw umber, a dab of titanium white to brighten up the edges, tone the middle with Payne’s—
“Claire?”
“Incredible,” I manage, brought back to earth, voice breaking on the words.
Jack squeezes me closer. “I know. I love that cliff. We used to scare Mom and Dad, promising one day we’d try diving off the edge. There’s no way—it’s much too high, but it was so fun to watch them panic.”
“Cruel children.”
“All children are cruel, aren’t they?” Jack says absently. “They don’t know any better. Look, there’s the Villa.”
I can’t see it, not yet, not until the boat rounds the promontory. The shoreline appears, a rocky beach with lines for a few small boats stretching into the channel. To the left, a smattering of pastel-colored houses built one atop the other stagger drunkenly up the cliffside. Gunmetal stone walls bisect the hills to the west, the terraced olive groves and vineyards that produce for the family’s bespoke line verdant with promise. And then the edges of the Villa appear, copper and rust and molded stone, and I fight back a gasp.
Truly, it is misnamed; not a villa, it is a castle. A modern fortress, down to its gated entry, state-of-the-art security system, and helicopter landing pad.
An island castle, beautiful and forbidding, and soon to be mine. No, ours. This vivid, lush, foreboding Italian paradise where I am going to marry the man of my dreams belongs to his family, to whom I am about to pledge my life.
I glance down at the teak deck of the boat carrying us to the island like Odysseus home from the wars.The Hebrides, it’s called, named for another set of isolated islands popular amongst the Compton clan.
A boat. Who am I kidding? This is a full-blown mega-yacht.
“It’s perfect,” I say. I turn in his arms and kiss him full on the mouth. Jack isn’t fooled.
“What’s the matter, darling?” He lifts my chin and searches my face, his cobalt eyes full of concern—they are the color of the sea,where the waves meet the rocks. “You look a little green. Is your head hurting?”
I fight the flashback as it happens—the searing pain, the confusion, the rough edge of the EMT’s blanket. My hand travels to the lump on the back of my skull. It is tender, and the stitches itch. I tap the scopolamine patch behind my ear, just to make sure it’s still there. Check.
Despite my precautions, I am feeling a little peaked. The waves have been surging on the trip over from the mainland, and the yacht moves in time.
“I’m fine. I just love you. For making all of this happen, for...everything.” I rest my forehead against his collarbone. He smells good, of cedar and sunshine and home.
As if he can discern my thoughts, Jack gives me a tight squeeze, then turns me around and starts pointing out landmarks. “See that white building, halfway up the hill? That’s the entrance to the artists’ colony. I can’t wait for you to see all the sculpture. With luck, we’ll have enough time for you to set up a canvas and capture some of the cliffs. The labyrinth is just there, follow my finger, look straight. See the dark spot in between the trees? And above that is part of the original fortress, built by Julius Caesar. Dad says it will be fully restored in another couple of years, enough for people to visit safely. It takes forever because of all the permits and conservation rules they must follow. But we’ll take a walk through it, naturally. And ahead, on the right, by the old houses? On the second floor of Villa la Scogliera? See the terrace?”
I do. It has the same cheery patina as the Villa’s coral stucco walls. A lemon grove pours over the wall, meeting the gaily striped ochre-and-tan umbrellas by the infinity pool below. On the terrace itself, on either side of the French doors, petunias spill from terra-cotta pots in bursts of aubergine and gold. It’s like aCondé Nastphoto shoot for the perfect Italian retreat.
Ithadbeen in aCondé Nastspread, but that was years ago. I read the piece when Jack first suggested we have the wedding here. I’d cut it out and used it as the basis for a painting I’d calledScylla, it inspired me so. It sold for $40,000 to a couple in Nashville with an obsession with mythology.
Hidden away on the western edge of Italy in the southwest of the Tyrrhenian Sea, out of sight from the mainland and the more popular islands of Capri and Anicapri to its north, lies the isolated Isle Isola. Originally a remote, hard-to-reach private armory of Julius Caesar, it is sometimes thought to be the island from which Homer’s Scylla perched in the cliffs, waiting for unsuspecting questing sailors like Odysseus, who had to choose between sailing closer to the six-headed beast or sinking into the gaping maw of Charybdis’s whirlpool. It is also said the island houses an oracle, but no documentation has been found to prove this claim. There have been a disturbing number of shipwrecks in the waters of the bay, surprise waves driving ships against the rocks at the base of the cliffs, and storms are known to arise without warning.
A more speculative fiction surrounds it; like any remote area, rumors abound about the island’s many hauntings over the years, including a famed Gray Lady who lingers about the fortress, supposedly the ghost of the daughter of one of the island’s many generals, who was sacrificed, given to an enemy who brought a mighty navy to attack the island. When he came ashore to parlay, the young woman was given to the man in good faith and disappeared that very night in a terrible storm. The storm raged for weeks, and the invading navy was driven away.
Sea monsters and unverifiable history aside, Isola’s occupation dates to Roman times, and is home to the stunning Villa la Scogliera, the house on the cliff, currently home to famed cinematographer Will Compton. The Villa, a former monastery, perches on the hillside and ties into the abandoned Roman fortress. While the Villa itself is of this century, and has been modernized with electricity and water, the fortress, abandoned for centuries, is undergoing a full renovation, sponsored in part by the Italian antiquities committee and the Compton Foundation.
In addition to grapes and olives, the island is known for its lemon groves. It also houses a natural rookery, home to the many birds who fly off course, find themselves lost in the straights and unable to return to land.
How romantic, how very Gothic and creepy, and how very Compton to choose an island in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sea monsters and exhausted birds to call their own.
“I see it. It’s lovely. Say the name again?”
“Villa la Scogliera.”
